Jefferson County sheriff’s Deputy Greg Everhart keeps an eye on things at Summit Ridge Middle School in Littleton earlier this month. Everhart helps security at several campuses in Jefferson County. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

A staffer here at The Denver Post has this quote on his email signature: “If you want your news for free, get it yourself.” It’s a pretty blunt phrase, but after reading reporter Zahira Torres’ “Violence in the Halls” series on the shortcomings of how schools report safety incidents to the public, I thought it was important to showcase the work that Post staffers do before that story even reaches the public.

Torres, whose report offered some startling examples of violent incidents at area schools, spent months requesting and analyzing data that she received, and enlisted the talents of digital producer Kevin Hamm to present an interactive database for people to view the results for themselves. I thought it would be interesting to ask Torres about the difficulties she had in getting the data.

It’s times like this that a news staff can recognize its value to the community.

But what does it take to bring that news to you? It takes a dedicated staff who will do whatever it takes. There are the reporters like Ryan Parker, who stayed on the scene in Boulder that first day until 6 a.m. so he could continually update our story. There are reporters like Sadie Gurman, who climbed over debris to reach a family who was willing to share how their loved ones were killed.

There are photographers like Craig F. Walker, above, who didn’t hesitate to get into the water to make sure you could see the fatigue and relief on the face of a man who got help getting out of his flooded home. Photographers Helen H. Richardson and Mahala Gaylord took mountain bikes to get to stranded residents in Jamestown. Journalists fanned out to all areas — north to Larimer County, east to Fort Morgan — to document where flooding was happening.

Here’s what the final edition of The Denver Post’s Sports section looked like Friday morning.

There were a couple of cheap shots during the Denver Broncos drubbing of the Baltimore Ravens Thursday night, and penalties were issued. While there will be no penalties against 9News and alt weekly Westword for their low blows to The Denver Post Friday morning, I will toss the yellow flag on their claims the paper failed to print the final score.

A truck drives past a drilling operation on Weld County Road 5 on July 25 in unincorporated Weld County near Berthoud. Longmont Times-Call

The Denver Post published the following correction in the Aug. 8 newspaper: “Because of incorrect information from an outside source, a photo caption on Wednesday’s 14A for a story on the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s conference misidentified equipment pictured: The operation shown is a drill rig in Weld County.”

We decided to run the correction after numerous readers called to complain that the photo, above, was not of a hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) operation but of a drilling rig.

I am the son of a mining engineer and in the late 1970s worked on a drill rig exploring for uranium in southern Colorado. So I was prepared to defend the photo caption, especially because the photographer’s information on the photo’s metadata identified it as a fracking operation.

A few phone calls and a lot of discussions later, I was convinced the caption needed clarification and the only way to do so was to correct the caption: It was wrong, and so was I.

If I understand correctly, a drill rig is brought in to sink the hole to the oil and gas zone and is then replaced by a “completion rig,” which prepares the hole with a wellhead that then can receive the fracking end of the process. So the operation with the tall derrick is replaced with a tangle of pipes and tanks. I am told that for the above-pictured rig, which is operating across the street from property owned by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, the drilling would take about 20 days. The fracking operation, pictured below, will be done later and is supposed to take only three or four hours.

Why is this important? While not as divisive a topic as gun control, abortion or free speech, hydraulic fracturing has become a hot debate between environmentalists and the extractive industry, particularly in the Northeastern and Western states where, respectively, the Marcellus and Niobrara shale formations are drawing so much activity.

Thus it is important for your Denver Post to be as accurate and honest with the words and images that appear across its platforms. And when we are wrong, we will right that wrong. And we will learn more along the way.

Workers tend to a wellhead during a hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado. Associated Press file

Denver Post file Warren E. Spears, supervisor of the evidence room in New Orleans, pushes boxes out of the way as he makes his way to the back of the attic that holds evidence above the courthouse. Spears’ boss describes the evidence room as “Somewhere between prehistoric and 18th Century.” (Denver Post / RJ Sangosti)

Denver Post photo editor John Sunderland, left, explains to Features department staffers about the best ways to photograph food with your smartphone. (Linda Shapley, The Denver Post)

There’s a common criticism of journalists that our knowledge is “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

That’s true, to a certain point — we find, in responding to the news, that we need to become instant experts on whatever the latest story happens to be, so we can explain to readers. And because the nature of news is that it’s different every day, our knowledge needs to be able to shift when it’s time to shift.

But one of the great traits of journalists is that the insatiable thirst for knowledge is something that can grow and continue. We’re taking what we learn, and we apply it to the next story we do.

That’s the premise, anyway, behind Denver Post U, our in-house training for journalists. It’s what got our newsroom up to speed on adopting Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ as useful reporting platforms. Currently, we’re training to take full advantage of Google Fusion Tables and better present the data that informs our reporting. We’re also doing classes in Google Hangouts, to give us another avenue for readers to find our stories.

The point is, we’re always learning. My thought is that you see it in the mile-deep depth of our coverage.

We sometimes get requests to remove old stories from our website. The privacy requests range from concerns about public safety to charges that might’ve been dropped to a story that evolved over time making the initial report obsolete.

The editors at The Post understand the requests – but we rarely grant them. Once we have published a story, it’s published. If we find the story had an error, we correct the error, but we don’t unpublish the story. There have been a few cases in my four years overseeing denverpost.com that we have granted the request, once for a public safety issue, once for a mental health privacy issue. But it’s rare.

People who have been through a traumatic event years ago sometimes will ask that a story be removed from the record. We understand the request: the internet allows for quick and easy searching – much different from the old days of going to the library and finding a newspaper clipping about an event. As a public, we love the ability to quickly find out just about anything with a few keystrokes. But, yes, it also means our transgressions might be as easily available.

Denver Post photographer Craig F. Walker was in the middle of this Occupy Denver skirmish in October 2011 — and it wasn’t the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him.

A study by the site CareerCast confirms what a lot of people in our newsroom already knew: committing journalism is not for the faint of heart.

In listing the Top 10 most stressful jobs for 2013, newspaper reporter and photojournalist crack a list that includes firefighter, enlisted military personnel and police officer.

Not only are those workers subjected to dangerous situations, they also face the sometimes hourly stress of deadlines and continuing uncertainty in the industry. Career Cast writes:

Two careers in the media industry score highly on the stress scale: photojournalist and newspaper reporter. Professionals from each field can be thrown into the epicenter of dangerous situations, such as war, natural disasters and police chases. Both careers also have declining job opportunities as the 21st century media landscape evolves. Newspaper reporters in particular face a shrinking job market; the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) estimates a 6% job decline in the industry by 2020.

The growth of online media has transformed the newspaper reporter’s job immensely. The immediacy internet outlets provide can be a useful tool, but it can also be a huge trap. Striving for the fastest reports can lead to inaccuracy and heightened stress. Watchful public eyes are trained on reporters at all times, so an incorrect report can compromise a reporter’s reputation as quickly as they can send a tweet.

Follow the link above to see the full list — and be nice to a journalist today.

[media-credit name=”Jorge Duenes/Reuters” align=”aligncenter” width=”495″][/media-credit] Immigrants hide from a border patrol vehicle while waiting a chance to cross into the United States at the border fence on the outskirts of the Tijuana.

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

In other words, the AP now suggests writers can use “illegal” to describe an action, but not a person.

Should news media use anonymous sources in reporting stories? Or maybe more importantly, when should news media use anonymous sources in reporting a story?

I was looking through readers comments on some of our stories on the murder of Colorado Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements. A few readers were taking us to task for using unnamed sources to report some details of the investigation. Yes, we used anonymous sources to first report Evan Ebel’s name. Yes, we used sources to tie Ebel to the 211 Crew prison gang and the possibility – just a possibility, mind you – that the gang ordered a hit on Clements for the DOC’s recent efforts to split up the gang.

The El Paso County sheriff’s office and a DOC spokesperson have issued statements criticizing the use of anonymous sources, but have not questioned the accuracy of the stories.

I am the Editor -in-Chief of The Denver Post. I have been in journalism since 1976, getting my start at the defunct Journal Herald in Dayton. Four years later, I went to work for my hometown newspaper.

I am a Colorado native who has been at The Post since 1996, working in copy editing and design before moving to administration. I created my first newspaper when the Broncos went to the Super Bowl in 1978.

I am the Digital Director for The Denver Post. I joined the Post’s web staff in 1999 — one week before the tragedy at Columbine High School. Prior to my journalism career, I worked in Washington as a legislative assistant for a New York congressman.

I am the Senior Editor/News at the Denver Post. I have been at The Post sincd 1999 in a variety of positions, including city editor and investigations editor. I previously worked at The Des Moines Register, and in Greenville, S.C.

I am the Managing Editor for Presentation and Design, overseeing the work of all visual journalists at The Post. I am a graduate of the University of Iowa (Go Hawks!) who has spent 33 years in the newspaper business.

I am the Denver Post city editor and a Colorado native, who has worked at news organizations of all sizes. Raised to be a princess, I continue my adolescent rebellion by keeping bees and chickens in the backyard of a house my husband and I rescued from the wrecking ball. Read her full biography »